When the crew arrives on Earth they are all given tasks to perform. Uhuru and Chekov were assigned to find a nuclear powered ship and obtain some excess nuclear power so their ship can make the trip back to the future. They found the (appropriately titled but still erroneous) U.S.S Enterprise and retrieved power from the Nuclear Reactor. If you know anything about ships, the U.S.S Enterprise was actually powered by boilers and not a nuclear reactor. The only thing they were going to retrieve was extremely hot water.

Don't know where you got your information but the USS Enterprise is NUCLEAR powered. Check out http://www.ncts.navy.mil/homepages/cvn65/welcom.htm Where you will find "It is the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and one of the most Amazing engineering feats of modern times." The movie wouldn't have made such an obvious mistake when it is so easy to verify either by the web or ask any Navy Veteran.

I am going with Bo's comment on this! Where did you get steam powered? The U.S.S. Enterprise (CVN-65) was the world's first NUCLEAR powered aircraft carrier. And since the prefix "CVN" has an N in it, it means that it's Nuclear!

Actually on a historical level (and anyone who researched naval vessals, try Janes, or any good book on the navy), there were *2* Enterprises in the 20th century, the first was a teakwood decked Enterprise, aircraft carrier from WWII, then there was a second brought along in the later half of the 20th century, a nuclear powered vessel...

Actually, the United States Navy had two aircraft carriers named Enterprise. The first one, CV-6, was built in 1936, powered by boilers, served in World War II, and was sold and disassembled between 1958 and 1960. The second, the CVN-65, was the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, built in 1961 and scheduled for de-commissioning in 2015. It led the air strikes against Afghanistan. My source? http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/startrek/SNE.html

For those of you who don't understand. The Enterprise is both steam and nuclear powered we do not yet have the capabilitys to use pure nuclear energy. He probably heard somewhere that the ship is powered by steam turbines, this is true but the steam is created by boiling water with the intense radiation heat of the nuclear reactor. Power is made by the same princables no matter what you do, It has just become more efficient by using different fuels.

OK so lets add another U.S.S. Enterprise to the list then. There was one bult at the same time as the U.S.S. Constitution (Ole Ironsides to most) Unfortunatly it could not run away as fast as Ironsides so was very rapidly sunk by the British. (The 1814 version of Klingons I guess)

I hate to disappoint Al, but although they weren't surfing the net as much as they are now, for this movie, the cast actually visited the aircraft carrier around the time the movie was made (whenever it wasn't on duty). It's all listed in George Takei's autobiography To the Stars. They went sailing, and the Enterprise got stuck on a sandbar. George had a little too much to drink, and when he talked to reporters shortly after the incident, he said they came up with a new drink, "Enterprise on the rocks." They visited the ship. How hard would it be for them to ask the crew what the ship used for power.

The crew didn't go to the Enterprise to steal power; they went to steal high-energy protons to recrytalize their dilithium. These protons were being collected from the reactor. It doesn't really matter how the ship is powered; as long as there is a reactor to take the protons from, the scene makes sense.

While it is true that the Enterprise is powered by extremely hot water, the water turning turbines, the water is heated by nuclear reactors, similar to those in a nuclear power plant, except the water turns the props as well as generates electricity.